


Speaking With a Bleeding Tongue

by theLiterator



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Adultery, Angst, Dark, Earth-2, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Infidelity, F/M, Sad Ending, Terminal Illnesses, Unethical Medicine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-11
Updated: 2015-12-11
Packaged: 2018-05-06 02:54:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5400221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLiterator/pseuds/theLiterator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tess Morgan is dying, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Speaking With a Bleeding Tongue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tuxedo_Elf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tuxedo_Elf/gifts).



> So Tux and I were discussing why Jay and Harry might hate each other so much, and I decided she'd had an affair with Jay before she died, or maybe Harry thought Jay's lab should have been able to save her.  
> Tux: maybe she doesn't want to be saved for some reason?  
> Me: Oh god, that would be so awful  
> Tux: yes, yes it would :D
> 
> Title comes from 3 Pill Morning's [Confrontation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgCoC-VMnBo). 
> 
> 2100 words later, I had written this. It was threatening to turn truly epic on me, so I'm posting what I have and trying really hard not to let it get away from me.
> 
> Enjoy?

Harrison paced his office until his legs ached, and still the fury simmered in his guts.

The... the _affair_ he could handle. He wasn't supposed to have known about it, but he'd been trying to surprise Tess on his lunch, and he should have _known_ not to come unannounced, not to enter a room without knocking first, but he'd been so _excited_.

Hartley had figured out the answer to a particularly sticky problem that morning, and he had just been so filled with excitement that of course he had forgotten all circumspection.

He had been quietly handling that particular hurt for weeks now without any problem, but this--

_"Dr. Wells," Garrick said, smiling a pained, polite smile. "She doesn't want to continue the treatment, and quite frankly, it would be illegal for me to force her to continue-- it was only experimental anyway."_

He, of _all_ people, should have understood _why_ Tess couldn't stop the treatment. Surely-- and Jesse of course mattered in this, and Garrick didn't have Jesse to worry about, but he--

How could he touch Tess if he didn't love her (how could he _know_ Tess without loving her?) and if he did love her, how could he let her die?

"Dad?" Jesse whispered from the doorway, eyes wide. "What's wrong?"

"Oh, my Jesse Quick," Harrison said, trying to smile for her.

Jesse grimaced at him, Tess's grimace, cute and wrinkly and...

And...

"We're going to talk about it as a family this afternoon," he said. "Are you ready to leave for the lab?"

Jesse nodded slowly, and Harrison wanted to offer her some sort of reassurance, but he absolutely could not, so he said nothing.

***

Garrick's lab was oddly hushed, and Harrison is torn between irritation-- of course Tess was always going to die, hadn't they known from the start that Garrick's methods of de-radiating drinking water were hardly likely to apply to human physiology in any successful way? (No matter that the human body was three-fourths water, no matter that Harrison himself had bribed Garrick into working illegally on a human subject, no matter no matter no matter--) and sympathy.

Tess was going to die. He'd known that since she'd been diagnosed shortly after Jesse's birth; she'd been living on borrowed time and blood and marrow transfusions ever since then; Jesse herself had the scars along her lower back to prove how hard they’d tried to keep Tess alive.

The room she'd been staying in for the past few months, ever since her illness had progressed to the point that attempting to walk would break too many fragile capillaries to justify the effort, was at the back of the lab, and the other lab technicians parted to let him and Jesse through, varying expressions of pity and sympathy painting all of their faces.

Harrison ignored them.

Garrick was already in the room when they got there, and Harrison wondered if he ever left. He wondered if he'd abandoned his own work, whether Tess might never have taken up with Garrick.

Unbidden, the memory of Garrick kissing her, butterfly light, hand hovering half an inch away from her cheek to keep from bruising her, sprang to his mind, and he rubbed the bridge of his nose in frustration.

 _That_ was hardly a productive line of thought.

In the present, Garrick's hand was cupped lightly around hers, and Harrison helped Jesse settle into the free seat, watched as she carefully closed her fingers around her mother's and smiled her mother's smile, the one that was a lie, that said everything would be fine.

"Harrison," Tess said, and Harrison shook his head.

"I will not break her heart for you," he snapped. "You need to tell her yourself, if you really intend on seeing this through."

"I have always intended on seeing this through," Tess said weakly. She smiled a rueful smile at him and shook her head. Harrison moved to brush her bangs back out of her eyes before Garrick could, and counted it a petty victory.

"Dr. Wells, maybe--"

"You are not the parent of my daughter," Harrison said coldly. That was _one_ thing Garrick would never be able to have of his, he thought, spiteful and petty and not at all the man he thought Tess and Jesse deserved.

At least, he reasoned, he would say none of this _aloud_.

"Mom, what's wrong?" Jesse asked, interrupting any response Garrick might have returned with. "Why was Dad _pacing_?"

"Oh, Jesse Quick," Tess whispered. "My baby girl. I'm so sorry-- I-- You're graduating in a few days, aren't you?"

Jesse nodded. "Yeah, and I've gotten with the AV club, they're going to stream it so you can see, it'll be like you're really there."

"All grown up," Tess said, smiling proudly. "I-- I've decided to stop treatment after that. It's not doing anything but prolonging the inevitable, and I don't... I don't want to watch you and your father be held back because of me."

"But, Uncle Jay's working on the new dialysis method; it should help! And we can do another marrow transfusion after school's over, I won't have anything to miss, so you can't make that argument."

"Honey," Tess said, smile fading. "I'm refusing _all_ treatment. We aren't going to do any more transfusions, and after you graduate I'm going to have them shut off the dialyzer."

"Mom!" Jesse gasped, and her fingers tightened too hard for a fraction of a second, until Harrison dropped his hand on top of both of theirs, and he could feel his daughter relax. "Sorry," she said. "Mom, please don't-- don't do this."

"Jesse, baby, I lived for you for so long, but you don't need me anymore. You've got your dad, and Jay promised me he'd look after you too-- both of you, don't you give me that look Harry--"

She started trembling, and Harrison shifted his hand so it was cupped _under_ hers, the gel of the special bed she was trapped in chill to the touch even though it should have held some warmth from her skin.

He was afraid to move her hand too much, afraid that the bones would splinter under the slightest pressure, but he couldn't bear to not have just this little piece of her still.

"Tess Morgan," he whispered, forgetting, briefly, that he was not alone with her in the room, in the _universe_. "You are a _miracle_."

She laughed, and Jesse bit back a sob.

"I love you too, Harry," Tess said. "And you'd better not forget it."

His phone rang, then, and he checked his watch to see who it was. Grimaced, because--

"I have to take this," he told her. "It's Hartley, and he wouldn't call if--"

"Go on, darling. Make our dream come true." Perhaps he was imagining it, because her fine motor control had been deteriorating quite a bit lately, but he thought she might have squeezed his hand.

***

He hadn't realized Garrick had access to his office, but some hours later he looked up to someone clearing their throat and it was _him_ , standing in the doorway.

"I believe I'm paying you to save my wife, not harass me at work." Harrison said, dropping his focus back down to the calculations Hartley had done. The integrity of the accelerator was suspect, but he had some idea on how to avoid catastrophic failure if he could just _concentrate_.

"Dr. Wells," Garrick began, and then, "Harry."

"Harrison, if you please," he said. "Just because you are intimate with my wife does not grant you the right to take the same liberties she takes with me."

Garrick swallowed audibly, and then he sat down. "Look, if you're upset about-- you should know that nothing--"

"Of course nothing has happened," Harrison snapped. "You would kill her if you tried to _fuck_ her, and you wouldn't risk that."

"Then why are you so angry?"

Harrison slammed his pencil down and shoved aside Hartley's lab book. "You are letting my wife _kill herself_."

"Letting--"

"If you loved her as much as I do; if you loved her enough to deserve her affections, as minute as they must remain with her illness, you would _save_ her."

"Dammit, Harrison," Garrick snapped, standing up again. "She doesn't want to be saved! I should have told you no two years ago-- my technology is for use on irradiated drinking water, not irradiated people! It's unethical for me to be using it on her untested in the first place, and now you want me to, what, continue using it on her _against her will_? You're insane!"

Harrison frowned at him.

"She has too much to live for. This accelerator, all of STAR Labs, it is her _dream_ , and she deserves to live to see it realized."

"She doesn't want to, Harrison," Garrick said, voice rasping. "Can't you let her go?"

"The bigger question," Harrison said, "Is why can you?"

"Because I can tell the difference between right and wrong," Garrick replied. "Which you clearly cannot. Look, maybe you should just... you should tell her you have to work for the rest of--” He scraped both hands through his hair and leaned back, clearly frustrated. “You being around her, telling her she has an obligation to continue living through this hell; it's taking a toll on her, and it would be best for her if you let her be."

Harrison stared at Garrick. "You may leave," he said finally.

Garrick snorted, and as soon as the door slammed shut behind him, Harrison dropped his head into his hands and sucked in a shuddering breath.

Garrick was, unfortunately, right, he thought.

The self-serving _bastard_.

Harrison picked his pencil back up and found a clean page in the back of Hartley's book.

"Dear Tess," he wrote, staring at the blocky text of his handwriting and wondering if he'd ever write those words again.

***

"Dear Tess," Jay read off the ripped out page, Tess's hand cupped gently in his. The lab would be fine without his direct involvement for a few weeks, so he'd stayed with her nearly continuously since she'd made her decision.

She deserved that much from _someone_ , he thought bitterly.

"The accelerator is only a few months away from completion. As such, I'm certain you will understand why it may be necessary that I spend more time supervising the work there, on our dream, instead of trying to persuade you against a course of action in an effort we both know will be in vain.

"As such, I hope you will accept this as my apology for anything I may have said to upset you. Know that this was never my intention, and that I wished only for us to enjoy many more years together, watching as STAR Labs flourished and brought about the scientific revolution and the lasting peace that you and I have always dreamed of together.

"With all of my love, through this life and whatever the future may bring,

"Harry."

Jay cleared his throat uncomfortable, guts twisting. This hadn't been his intention-- he'd thought to shock Dr. Wells into action, not consign him to permanent _in_ action.

"Tess," he said, "I'll go talk to him, I'll make him understand."

"No, Jay, don't," Tess said, licking her eternally dry lips. "I won't hurt him anymore." She sighed slowly, fingers twitching against his. "The thing you must understand about Harrison is that he fears weakness; his _and_ others'. It's... not the best quality in a man, but..." she trailed off, but the love in her eyes spoke volumes. Jay felt his chest grow tight with jealousy-- why had she stayed with the man, when he was… infuriating _at best_ and self-involved to the point of narcissism the rest of the time?

She smiled wanly. "I won't force him to watch me die any longer-- I won't force _anyone_. Are you certain you have nothing else you could be doing? Jesse will be by in a few hours, and I'm sure there's a movie I can stream that I haven't watched a hundred times already."

"I'm sure, Tess," Jay said. "I won't leave you."

He pretended not to see the tiny frown that twisted up between her eyebrows, and tried hard not to picture her in her prime of life, when that frown might have been a full-blown grimace, when he might have kissed her to laughing instead.

He brushed her hair back from her cheek with a featherlight touch. "I love you."


End file.
